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I wish I had the patience for food photography. There are so many wonderful blogs out there that make your mouth water just to read them because of the gorgeousness of the photography. And food should be beautiful, in my opinion, if it’s at all possible. When food is beautiful and then the taste is scrumptious, then you don’t have to wait to see if there’s a heaven after this life on earth.

I made an amazing carrot soup tonight. I know it’s bragging, and it was kind of accidental, but everyone who tasted it agreed.

So, I’d loved to have photographed it properly and presented it to you like this:

Beautiful colour, but not such an impressive picture. But you know you’ll want to make this soup.

The problem with carrot soup is that the flavour depends so much on the quality of the carrots. And let’s face it, in the middle of winter, a lot of carrots have become kind of bitter, bland, or otherwise uninspiring, when what you really want is sweetness, with just a hint of zing.

That, my friends, is what this soup delivered. Pure, sweet, carroty goodness. My method was the taste-test-add-taste-again method, but I’ll try to estimate quantities for you.

Heavenly Carrot Soup

3 tbsp coconut oil

2 medium onions, chopped

5 or 6 large carrots, washed, unpeeled (so easy)

1.5 – 2 L water

1 tbsp savoury

1 tsp celery seed

1 – 2 tbsp salt

2 – 3 tbsp creamed honey

2 tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice

fresh mint for garnish

In a large pot, melt the coconut oil. Add chopped onions and cook until softened. Some slight browning is okay. Just let them cook while you chop the carrots.

Discard the tops of the carrots and chop into 3-5mm circles. Probably you could chop into any size you want, but I wanted these to cook quickly. Add the chopped carrots to the pot.

At this point I also added three peeled and chopped broccoli stems that I happened to have hanging about. I don’t think they did a thing to the flavour, but you know, in the spirit of full disclosure here…

Add 1.5 to 2 L of water and bring that baby to a boil. Turn down to a slow boil or hot simmer. Whatever you feel like. I was impatient. Dinner was late as it was.

Add the savoury, celery seed, and salt. I used coarse sea salt because I ran out of the fine stuff. I figured it would dissolve anyway and it wouldn’t matter. I like to be kind of generous with salt, I admit it. Salt to your own taste.

Add enough honey to make the soup as sweet as summer carrots.

Lemon juice adds just a slight puckery zing to the soup that is otherwise just too sweet. Don’t add too much or it’ll just taste like lemons. Fresh-squeezed is SOOOO much better than the bottled kind. I happened to have some leftover from last night’s dinner (but truly fresh-squeezed would have been even better, as I find it starts getting bitter when it sits out). But, hey, even bottled is better than none at all.

After the carrots are cooked soft, get out your handy-dandy immersion blender (or transfer in batches to the other kind of blender) and whirl it all up until smooth(ish).

Ladle into bowls and garnish with fresh mint. Ooooh, yeah. Mint and sweet carrots are a match made in heaven, baby.

Michael had his soup as-is. Halia’s got the ice cube treatment. I added a splash of almond milk to the middle of mine. It was aaaaaalll good.

Michael has never been a fan of eggplant. I’ve cooked it maybe twice in our 14 years together, and last summer he tried some he deemed “acceptable” while attending a wedding. This spring, Halia planted an eggplant at her dayhome, and it was duly transplanted into the greenhouse. It didn’t survive transplantation, but Michael planted a new one on the sly.

I harvested that one eggplant — with some injury to my fingers, because did you know that eggplants grow gigantic spikes?? — just before our trip to Ottawa and brought it all the way to Ontario with me so that we could cook it there and eat it together.

That eggplant is still sitting in my mother-in-law’s fridge. Or perhaps it joined the rest of the Thanksgiving scraps in the compost bin. Poor eggplant, so arduously cared-for all summer long. The whole saga is so distressing, I had to buy an eggplant when I did my big homecoming grocery shopping on Tuesday morning.

Today, I cooked the darn thing. And it was delicious. So delicious, in fact, that Michael proclaimed it something he would happily eat frequently. I do have my doubts about just how nutritious it is, being so fried and salted. But it’s delicious. And easy, too.

Oops, we ate them up so fast, there are none left to photograph. Here’s, uh, the pan I fried them in.

Gluten-Free Vegan Battered and Fried Eggplant

Ingredients:

1 eggplant, any size you wish

salt

cornstarch

corn flour

coconut oil, or other oil of your choice for frying

Directions:

Wash, peel, and cut eggplant into 1 cm slices. You can remove the peel entirely or peel it in “strips” to leave a bit of the purple on the outside edge.

Generously salt the eggplant and set it in a colander for an hour. Salting the eggplant draws out the bitterness and also removes excess moisture that can cause the eggplant to be soggy when cooked.

After salting is done, rinse the excess salt off and use two hands to squeeze each slice to remove excess moisture.

Start heating your oil in a pan. I used coconut oil and had it about 0.5 cm deep, so a good thick layer of oil.

Toss slices in a bowl to give them a coat of cornstarch. Make sure both sides are coated.

Dip each slice into a bowl of water, then coat each side in corn flour.

Fry 4-5 slices at a time in hot oil, letting each side turn golden before flipping. Don’t crowd the pan!

Remove from heat and drain on paper towels. Let them cool a bit, and then enjoy! Crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside!

I used to make banana bread on a pretty regular basis. I don’t anymore for two reasons. One is that there are banana monsters in my house, which means I rarely have any overripe bananas around. Two is because I haven’t done much baking at all since we went gluten-free (not to mention egg- and dairy-free).

Last weekend I was motivated to try, though, so I Googled “gluten-free” banana bread and came up with a winner on my first click. The recipe came from Pattycake.ca, and I am copying it here, noting the slight changes I made.

Mix wet and dry until just incorporated. If adding nuts/chocolate/fruit, fold it into batter. Pour into a generously greased and dusted loaf pan (I use a glass pan). Bake at 350 for about 55min – a toothpick inserted in center should come out clean.

If using all honey or agave nectar, your loaf may brown too quickly. If you notice this, lower the oven to 325 and/or loosely cover the top of the loaf with some foil.

Quite a few of my non-gluten-free friends tried this loaf, and everyone agreed that it was yummy! I tried it last week with all rice flour (half brown, half white) and today I tried it with half corn flour, which I preferred, but I’d take it either way. Mmmm, pass the vegan margarine, please. (Or butter for me!)

Some of my long-time readers may remember this post, in which I shared the recipe for Michael’s favourite dessert, fruit pizza. It’s a tradition for me to make it for him for his birthday. Sadly, since it contains both flour and dairy, it’s off Michael’s list of can-haves.

I put my thinking cap on, revved up the creative engine, and rolled up my sleeves (enough metaphors yet?) to work on making it Michael-friendly; that would mean gluten-free and vegan*.

The crust came out great on the first try, but I failed at my first attempt at the filling when I used coconut milk and agar-agar. Happily, I came up with a winner using cornstarch. Sometimes it takes a bit of experimentation and yes, even failure. But the end results are oh-so-sweet.

**NOTE: Use good-quality coconut milk and don’t skimp on the fat. I recommend Thai Kitchen’s full-fat coconut milk,which is very sweet and luxuriously creamy.

FOR THE GLAZE

1/4 cup apricot jam or orange marmalade

2-3 tbsp hot water

INSTRUCTIONS

To make the crust, melt the margarine and coconut oil, then blend in sugar. Add flours, oats, pecans, and the mashed banana. Spread onto a pizza pan. I found that the oils made this batter difficult to spread using a wooden spoon, but using my hands to pat it in place worked very well. Bake at 375°F until the edges brown (around 10 minutes). Because of the banana, this crust is a bit cakier and takes longer to bake. After the edges browned, I used the broiler to crisp up and brown the top of the crust, which took just a few minutes. Watch carefully so that you don’t burn it! Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

The final crust was cookie-like and softened up to a nice chewy texture after being refrigerated with the topping on it. It did taste quite oat-y compared to the original, but I rather liked that. If you prefer less of an oat flavour, I think you could safely replace some or all of the oat flour with more rice flour.

For the filling, shake the can of coconut milk to blend the fat and liquid. Pour it into a medium-sized pot and set the heat to medium. Dissolve the cornstarch in several tablespoons of cool water, then stir it into your coconut milk. Add the maple syrup and lemon juice. (You could also add vanilla, but I didn’t, as it doesn’t agree with Michael.) As the mixture heats up, be sure to stir continuously to avoid starch lumps. The cornstarch will start to work its magic, thickening up the coconut milk. When it reaches the consistency of pudding, remove from heat. Allow to cool before spreading it onto the crust. It will thicken up a little more when it has been refrigerated.

After spreading the coconut milk onto the crust, decorate with your fruit toppings as desired.

Mix the jam and hot water together. Press through a sieve if you desire a smoother consistency. Use a pastry brush or silicone basting brush to spread the glaze gently over the fruit. (The glaze seals off the fruit to keep it from oxidizing too quickly. It also adds sweetness, so even if you use less than perfectly sweet fruit, the final dessert will still be yummilicious.)

Cover the whole pizza with saran wrap and chill until set, at least several hours or overnight.

It’s also a good idea to put a bigger pizza pan underneath, if you have one, to catch any drippings from the glaze.

Although there are a few more ingredients to the crust, this recipe really isn’t any more difficult than the original fruit pizza, and it’s just as pretty and every bit as delicious. Even the fruit pizza addict agrees! (There would be photos of him enjoying the fruits of my labours, but of course, he scarfed it much too quickly for a camera to capture the action. Next time I’ll use the sport setting.)

*No, we’re not vegan, but when you can’t have eggs or dairy, pretty much any dessert you eat is going to be vegan. Unless you’re into chicken breast on your desserts…

Welcome!

Hi, I'm Fawn from Whitehorse, Yukon, and this is my online home. I'm a Mama and a housewife by day and a jazz singer by night. This blog is all about mommyhood, childhood epilepsy, special diets, and just surviving the dishes and laundry... but you can check out my music site at fawnfritzen.com.